MillerCoors said Tuesday that it will premier a one-second ad for its Miller High Life brand during the Super Bowl broadcast Feb. 1.

The spot will focus on the brand's current campaign that features the burly High Life delivery man who aims to reinforce the brand as a "good, honest beer at a tasty price." MillerCoors notes that air time for a 30-second commercial during the game is selling for as high as $3 million.

“Miller High Life is all about high quality and great value, so it wouldn’t make sense for this brand to pay $3 million for a 30-second ad,” said High Life senior brand manager Kevin Oglesby, in a press release. “Just like our consumers, High Life strives to make smart choices. One second should be plenty of time to remind viewers that Miller High Life is common sense in a bottle.”

God knows I absolutely love the High Life Common Sense campaign. Check it here and here.

Tuesday

Playing for Change is a multimedia movement created to inspire , connect and bring peace to the world through music. They have created an amazing video.

Ben Watson of Bit Pakkit sums up the following video beautifully, "Bill Moyers takes us around the world mixing the voices and music of musicians from across the globe to a beautifully orchestrated and shared experience that transcends the original message of the song in a beautiful and compelling way."

Visit their site to learn more about the film, the journey and the movement.

We work in the idea business. Discovering, creating and selling ideas is how we make money and the longer you are in the business the more true this quote becomes:

“If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.” - Howard Aiken

Big ideas should scare. Clients are inherently afraid of risk because they have a job they want to keep, an organization looking over their shoulder and scrutinizing their decisions every time they turn on a TV, open a newspaper, go online or drive through the city. Even when a client sees the genius behind a big idea a mile long list of challenges lay in waiting, looking to kill that idea. Getting an idea through upper management, finance, etc may seem akin to trying to lift an elephant. A lot of effort and energy with the high possibility of getting squished.

Especially in the current times where ROI is the new creative director and every dollar spent is scrutinized original, untested and unproven creative ideas will not be welcomed with open arms...in most organizations. It is the job of the account team to take the ideas of their creative teams and sell them. This requires understanding the culture of the company, motivations of the decision makers, your clients personal motivations (awards, sales, internal recognition), where the organization is willing to invest, what measurements they value and what is the right timing among other factors. Presenting an idea only after these factors have been analyzed and addressed is the first step towards getting that elephant off the ground.

Think about the opportunity that presents to the few clients that are willing to take a risk? The opportunity is big and the rewards could be even bigger.

Monday

Since we added Facebook Connect to AdJoke, I've been thinking a lot about how important our digital identities have become and what the future of our D-ID's could look like (Digital identities) Think about it for a moment.

Right now, the average person has at least 6-12 profiles across a number of sites (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Amazon, Ebay and Gmail to name a few of the most common). Each of these sites requires a user to create their own profile, verify their identity (by simply ensuring that you can type in a few letters and aren't a computer) and for the eCommerce bunch, confirm that your credit card has some room on it when you make a purchase.

For most people, multiple profiles are a pretty big hassle. Not only do you have to fill out the user form everytime you want to start a profile, you've got to verify your account via an email and remember your user name and password for each site your a member of.

There has to be a better way.

Facebook Connect is a start, however people might become wary of giving a site like Facebook (which sells your data to advertisers) more information then they already have.

So what's the solution? Here's a start:

I was pretty memorized when I first watched this presentation. It's a fantastic account of the evolution of digital identity and offers a few insights into what the future could look like. We need a verified identity from a trusted source (like a government site) that can be used across all of our favorite sites. I'm sick of creating profiles for ever site, spreading my information everywhere and knowing that I'm being put on about 1,000 email lists for advertisers just like myself.

Sure - this might not stop with one, firm D-ID. But it could get better. And, at the very least, I won't have to remember 30 user ID's and passwords anymore.

...and invest the dollars that would have gone to media agency commission into something valuable (like auditing your website user-experience).

Google TV ads is out and bringing the Google auction system to the world of media. I am interested in seeing how this service grows over the next few years. Something tells me that the traditional world of media buying is ignoring this and will continue to justify their model to clients.

Michael Steib the director of Google TV ads has a nice quote in Fast Company that sums up the service and benefits:

"One of the things we've learned from online advertising is that marketers make day-to-day decisions. In the traditional model of TV ad sales, you make buying commitments months in advance. With our system, you can bid on spots up to the day before. We've also just introduced a feature that uses search. If you're Allstate or DirecTV, two of our customers, you can type in keywords such as 'family' or 'football,' and our system generates a list of programs whose metadata is either an exact match or related. We're only going to give you content contextually relevant to your brand. And all that takes minutes. The next day, you get a report back that tells you what spots ran, what audience was delivered, and how much of your budget was spent. You're getting almost real-time data."

Pair this with the Google TVs ad tracking partnership with Nielsen and you have a game changing product. How many media CEO's or Presidents do you think are taking this seriously? As one of my favourite quotes goes:

"The bullet that kills you never hits you between the eyes. It hits you in the temple. You never see it coming, because you are looking in the wrong direction."